Bollettino valanghe

Southeast Mountains

Crested Butte Avalanche Center
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Pericolo valanghe

Fri
Alta quota
1 · Debole
Limite del bosco
2 · Moderato
Sotto il limite
2 · Moderato
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In sintesi

Much of the Southeast Mountain forecast area has shallow snow depths, with a better chance of stuffing your ski tips into a goffer hole, then triggering an avalanche. However, heightened avalanche danger can be encountered on some steep northerly facing slopes. In this specific terrain you can trigger Dry Loose avalanches, "facet sluffs". These avalanches are generally small, however, these sluffs can grow in size on continuously steep terrain and become more hazardous. You can identify slopes with increased concern by the lack of support that the snowpack provides to skis, board, or foot. Slopes steeper than about 37 degrees will require you to manage the loose avalanche problem to prevent being pushed into rocks, trees, or stumps.  

Problemi valanghivi

  • Loose Dry

    • Alta quota
    • Limite del bosco
    • Sotto il limite del bosco
    Probabilità
    Likely
    Dimensione
    1

    On very steep terrain sheltered from the sun and wind, you can easily trigger sluffs where the snow surface is loose and cohesionless. These skier triggered loose avalanches from Climax Chutes on Thursday, 12/3, highlight the problem.   In the Southeast Mountains, facet sluffs have been gouging to the ground and are more challenging to manage than typical sluffing.  While most of these avalanches are small in size, they can easily cause harm because they will drag you over rocks, stumps, and bare ground.  In terrain with long, sustained runouts, slides will grow in size as they entrain more snow, and in rare cases,  may reach up to D2 in size.  

Avalanche Discussion

The shallow snowpack around Crested Butte has been weakened and faceted by cold temperatures and valley inversions. This faceted snowpack has produced human-triggered loose avalanches for the past week. The largest of these avalanches have occurred in terrain close to Crested Butte where strong valley inversions have created a cohesionless snowpack the lacks any kind of support. You can check out some observations of this avalanche activity in these observations from Happy Chutesand Climax Chutes. Observations from the past week out of the Northwest Mountains have shown the Dry Loose avalanche problem to be even smaller, involving just the surface snow. Beneath the weak surface often lies a more supportive base that prevents loose avalanches from gouging to the ground. You can look at these observations from the Northwest Mountains to better understand the problem where the snowpack is a bit stronger (Schuylkill Ridge, above Pittsburg, Purple Palace, and Anthracites). One way to help manage this avalanche problem is by performing ski cuts to flush snow prior to descending, and to get a feel for how the snow will behave. The snowpack in alpine terrain is denser than slopes at low elevations and offers a significantly reduced chance of encountering the Dry Loose avalanche problem.

With new snow in the forecast and the arrival of a more active weather pattern, the Avalanche Danger will rise into the weekend. The current snowpack is exceptionally weak after a long and cold period of dry weather. We expect little new snow will be needed to start forming new avalanche problems that will quickly become sensitive to human triggering. Natural avalanche activity may also be on the horizon late Saturday and into Saturday Night. 

Regioni coperte